Home Pages: A workshop on building a home on the web with Alberto Cinco Jr.
What if your website wasn't just a portfolio or a profile, but an actual home—a digital space you could inhabit, rearrange, and return to? Before social media standardized how we exist online, the web was wilder and more personal. People built homepages by hand, places that felt lived-in and uniquely theirs.
In this workshop, we'll reclaim that spirit. You'll learn to code your own handmade homepage from scratch—not just the technical basics of HTML and CSS, but the creative philosophy of treating a website as a space of your own making. We'll explore the history of personal websites (from Tim Berners-Lee's original vision to Geocities, LiveJournal, and today's Neocities revival), examine contemporary examples of websites as living spaces, and discuss what makes the "handmade web" feel so different from corporate platforms.
Through guided activities—including a digital "slam book" to generate ideas about what home means to you—you'll build a page that reflects your personality, interests, and sensibilities. Whether you want something cozy and minimal, chaotic and expressive, or experimental and evolving, you'll leave with both a working homepage and a new understanding of websites as spaces you can genuinely inhabit.
By the end, you'll have:
Your own handmade homepage representing a 'room' in a home
A part in a wider homepage shared by Developh
Working knowledge of HTML/CSS as creative tools, not just technical skills
A collection of references showing what personal websites can be
Practical techniques for thinking about web design as space-making
A supportive community interested in the handmade web
Some basic HTML/CSS experience is required to attend the event. This is not an event for people with zero coding experience.
This is an online event. The session will be recorded. Materials and recordings will be sent after the workshop to registered participants, and will then be posted online to the public after a delay.
This event is part of Developh's 2025 Rainy Season Talks series, focusing on workshops that center creative and critical practices around technology.
Donate to the workshop
If you have the capacity to donate to Developh, these are our suggested workshop fees:
Philippines: 250-600 PHP
Outside the Philippines: 15-25 USD
Donations may be made at paypal.me/developh or via GCash to the number in this link.
If you cannot donate due to financial circumstances, limited slots are available for free. Input '0' at registration until available.
About the speaker
Alberto Cinco Jr. is a graphic designer and technology hobbyist based in Manila, Philippines. In his pastime, he practices and feeds his curiosity about the poetic potential of the web and technology at large.
https://www.are.na/alberto-cinco
About Developh
Developh is an arts & research institution nurturing critical and creative technologies, working towards a more archipelagic internet. As a community of practice, we gather, publish, research, and create to reclaim technology as a tool for liberation rather than oppression. Our activations concern the online, offline, and in-between.